Family Fun: Hot Chicks At The Museum of Science and Industry

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

The boys and I enjoyed a recent jaunt to the Museum of Science and Industry, known to the cool as MSI, where we are members.  Thank goodness it wasn't nutsy-crowded.  Favorites on this trip included

The Reactable (a music-making wonder in the Fast Forward Exhibit).  I could play this all day.
The NAO robot, also in Fast Forward.  Among the other jillions of things it does, NAO can sit down on its little robot butt after a dance routine, and then get up again from a sitting position. Amazing.
Science Storms - Indoor tornado.  Enough said.
The Jollyball Machine
Month at the Museum 2 - A young man named Kevin won a contest to live, sleep, and blog about MSI for a month.
The Pioneer Zephyr - a special thank-you to the cute/nerdy tour guide with the Devo button on his lab coat.
The Chicks!  So cute you might hurl.  They go to sleep in super slo-mo - the beak just comes down in slow motion until it hits the sawdust.  One chick sat on another sleeping one and then went to sleep on top of him/her.  We were a bit concerned until the latter woke with a start and flailed until they were free.

The chicks are now part of a larger and fairly cool genetic exhibit which also features live fruit flies, cloned mice, and a microscope so powerful that your fingerprints look like giant sand dunes.

We were spared the Anatomical Slices this time.  These old-fashioned grossouts have lurked in one of the stairwells for decades.  As a kid I invariably passed them on field trips on the way to the school lunchroom.

One thing I haven't seen in a while that I enjoyed being creeped out by is the giant model of the human heart. I'm sad to hear it was taken down in 2008.

There were also some cool mathematical exhibits in the old days.  the balls that would mound up and form a bell curve, more balls that would spin around and down into a hole, and a machine that made soap bubbles in wacky shapes such as cubes.  If anybody remembers those, I'd love to hear your memories.

The Whispering Gallery is still there, amazingly in its 73rd continuous year of display, and still works just as perfectly as ever.  Nice to have a display that doesn't rely on electricity to deliver a thrill.

What about you?  What's your favorite thing at MSI?